THAT THERE MAY BE A FAIRER SOCIETY IN GHANA - ONE IN WHICH ALL THE PEOPLE, NOT JUST A POWERFUL AND GREEDY FEW, BENEFIT FROM THE NATION'S WEALTH!

Tuesday, 29 May 2018

Mining Bauxite And Gold In The Atewa Range Is A Crime Against Humanity

The Ghanaian media is failing the ordinary people of our nation. Big time. It is time they sat up - for it is their bounden duty to protect our nation and its citizens from being led down a path that will only end in the destruction of our natural heritage and needless lowering of our quality of life, and that of future generations of our people, as sure as day follows night.

It is alarming that as usual, in typical fashion, the Ghanaian media - a murky world choking with the mediocre, alas - succeeded in failing to take note of the most profound statement ever made by a Ghanaian politician, since we took our country back from the British occupiers of our ancestral landmass, who had colonised it, and from whom as a people we finally wrestled sovereign power in March 1957.

In saying, in effect, that he could develop our nation using the nous and gumption of its people, instead of relying on its natural resources, Dr. Ekow Spio Garbrah raised the bar for political leadership in Ghana. Yet, incredibly, with all the harm to ecosystems being wrought across vast swathes of the Ghanaian countryside by the gold mining industry, not a single media house understood the import of what he was saying. Amazing.

At a time when global climate change is impacting our country so negatively, the blockheaded pursuit of GDP growth without once stopping to ponder what actually constitutes that growth, is no longer tenable. Now that Spio Garbrah has made it plain that it is better to develop Ghana using the brainpower of its citizens instead of its natural resources, there can be no excuse for continuing with that myopic foolishness.

The media must demand that the government takes Ghana's committment to the UN SDGs seriously. The time has now come for us to confront our vampire-elites who can't see beyond their noses and think that destroying our priceless natural heritage by giving out the Atewa Range to foreigners to mine bauxite in, in exchange for cash amounting to some U.S.$20 billion, is innovative thinking. It is not. It is lunacy and the height of foolishness. Destroying the Atewa Range by mining bauxite and gold in it is a crime against humanity. Nothing more, nothing less. The right thing to do is to turn it into a national park - so that it becomes the pillar for a new green economy for Akyem Abuakwa. Now. Not tomorrow. Full stop. We rest our case.